Call For Project Proposals for Promoting RoboCup

The RoboCup Federation is pleased to issue this call for proposals to fund community driven efforts in 2012 to benefit our RoboCup Community (i.e. “from RoboCuppers for RoboCuppers”).

The funding will be in the range of US$1K to US$5K and the proposed activities must be completed by the end of 2012. We expect to assign a total of up to US$50K as the total to all the awards selected.

The list of examples given below in (i) – (iii) is absolutely not intended to be exhaustive. We strongly encourage you to consider innovative ways in which the goals set out below can be achieved.

We prefer not to fund activities where alternative sources of funding are readily available.

Goals of funding and activities considered for funding

In providing this funding we aim at supporting three types of activities, namely:
(i) to benefit the infrastructure of our RoboCup events,
(ii) to contribute to strongly RoboCup-focused research efforts
based on exchange of people,
(iii) to promote the education on specific RoboCup topics.

Type of activities to be supported

(i) INFRASTRUCTURE

This includes developments of infrastructure (usually software or hardware) to support significant advancements of the RoboCup leagues and of the RoboCup community which are difficult to achieve otherwise.

Examples of proposals under this category are (but not limited to) implementation of:

- Infrastructure for sharing open source code and other design best practices
- Game controllers
- Simulator extensions
- Middleware to support mixed teams
- Automated referees
- Automated game commentators, e.g., for facebook and/or tweeter
- Defining and mining a RoboCup social network
- Creating a database of job positions
- Development of open software and/or hardware platforms

Requests to buy hardware for the competition infrastructure will not be accepted within this call and would be handled outside the scope of this call.

(ii) EXCHANGE

This includes exchange of team members to promote interchange and integration of research from different sources.

- RoboCup camps
- RoboCup workshops (standalone or in connection with other
conferences or events)
- Resources for the academic community and/or general public
to help them understand the purpose and scientific
as well as technological achievements of RoboCup

Application procedure

The applicants must be either Team Leaders (from 2010-2011), Members of League Technical Committees, Execs, or Trustees. For Junior leagues, only Members of League Technical Committees, Execs or Trustees can submit applications for activities of type (i) and (iii) only.

Multiple, including collaborative, applications for the same goal are possible (although not encouraged). In this case, each application must be submitted separately, but it should clearly indicate any relationship with other applications.

A proposal should address the following topics:

* What? Describe exactly the technical content of the proposal and what activity funding is requested for. Also provide any contextual information that you think is relevant.

* How Much? A budget, in US$, which: clearly states the amount requested; provides details of the use of requested funds.

* Why? Statement of the objectives of the activity and brief justification for the requested funding; note that priority will be given to activities for which no alternative funds are available.

* Who? Describe who will benefit from the proposed activity and the expected impact on the RoboCup Community and how the expected impact can be evaluated.

* When? Dates of the proposed activity, and date by which funding would be needed.

The proposal will be evaluated by a specific committee of the Trustees of the RoboCup Federation according to the following criteria:

- Quality of the proposal (technical content and presentation)
- Likely level of impact on for the RoboCup Community
- Scientific merit of the applicant
- Adequacy of resources and budget, cost effectiveness/value for money.

In case of need, the committee may ask for proposal evaluators from within or external to our community. The outcome of the evaluation will be communicated via email to the address specified in the application by January 23, 2012.

The decision of the committee with respect to funding decisions is final, and we will not enter into any correspondence with respect to unsuccessful proposals.

Award of the support

Given the diversity of our community, with different financial constraints for each country and institution, we envision providing the financial support in one of three forms:

The timing for awarding of the support will be set as a function of the needs of the activity. In general, it will be based on the completion of the activity, the presentation of a summary report, and original receipts, as applicable.